Posts by Greg

US navy-v-dolphins judge says Bush can't overrule her

@Spleen

> I might be missing something about the legal system

Indeed, you are.

When a judge is overruled by the Supreme Court, does he say 'Yes I can' ?

He doesn't, because constitution allows the Supreme Court to override the judge (or rather, only allows it on constitutional grounds, but Supreme Court actually believes in the rule of law and thus really tries to apply the constitution andn ot push its own agenda).

If a judge says 'No you can't ', it's because there's a reason, and the reason is explained in a filing (11 pages, here).

Bush has a right to overridea decision from a judge only in case of a national emergency.

Being able to carry on spotting submarines during training scheduled to take place very near a given american coast is hardly an emergency (let's postpone the test, or do it in plain sea). thus Bush has no right to overturn, and his decision is void.

And the judge is in his right to say so

Sociologists: Studying engineering turns you into a terrorist

Oh, and one more huge bias...

In addition to the complete randomnes sof the criteria and the fact that there is a bias toward engineering for middle-eastern students:

Is the list drawn up in any way representative? IMHO, 'basic' terrorist would end up nonames in Al Qaida in Iraq and would explode somewhere killing troups or innocent civilians.

Then you never have their name anywhere, because they're all the same, they're 'an iraki terrorist' or 'an afghan terrorist'. Those who get their name known are those who have a plan, or are part of it.

Guess what? Scientific people, like for instance engineers, make plans.

Sociologists, on the other hand, seemingly don't. They take some data, try to make it explode in a report, and because they're so lame you never hear about them again because the bomb report is comlpetely ill-conceived and does nothing at all.

Ryanair battles ASA over 'saucy schoolgirl' ad

Dircom

Does noone sees the most interesting point of the article is the Director of Communication's communication?

"The airline's head of communications, Peter Sherrard, declared: [...] "This isn't advertising regulation, it is simply censorship. This bunch of unelected self-appointed dimwits are clearly incapable of fairly and impartially ruling on advertising.""

Whoh, that's the DIRECTOR of COMMUNICATION. You know, the guy who's responsible for being diplomat when you need, whose role is to give a good image all around and to smooth angles.

Insulting in front of the whole world the very people who rule over the field he's responsible for.

That was a real laugh.

Secret bidding for US airwaves tops $3.3bn

Converting cash into assets???

Mamite Toast: "Having said that converting cash in to assets it's probably a good move if there's going to be a global down turn."

Uh? What?

That's exactly the opposite.

If there is a downturn, asset price fall, so actually the very best thing to do just before a downturn is sell all assets if you have any, and certainly not buy if you have just cash.

What you're saying here is basically "oh, stocks are going to go way down, so I guess it's time to buy everything I can before it falls" (though you're talking about the assets that the companies own, companies whose value will decrease in case of downturn so it's the same).

eBay: 'We will lower listing fees'

@Simon Elavy: eBay new policy is precisely the solution to your problem

Several of you fail to analyse the change and see the consequences. You are thinking about tomorrow's principles based on today's behaviour, behaviour based on today's principles.

(no, I'm in no way an eBay fan see my commetn above, in fact I hate monopolies abusing their dominant position but that's not the point)

Currently, both give feedbacks. If you leave a negative feedback, be it to buyer or seller, you'll also get a negative feedback and you're screwed. See Simon Elavy.

The new policy removes half of the problem: a fraudulent seller can no longer threaten you with negative feedback he would leave you if you denounce their scam. The opposite is still possible.

Half of the way done.

Now that half of the way actually has consequences for the other half: for starters, it's the biggest half of the way. Sellers are often professionals and so are trusted. Trusted enough that they can require payment to be made before giving the item.

On the opposite, the massive fraud problems with ebay come from hacking of trustworthy accounts by scammers. Not from buyers not paying fool sellers who send before receiving the money.

Now with that new policy, what happens? Well, because a seller has no power at all to give a negative feedback, it becomes almost instantly totally accepted that a seller will ALWAYS receive full paiement before delivering anything.

This is anyway what already occurs in most cases.

Second half of the problem solved: seller can't be scammed, hence he doesn't need the ability to give a negative feedback.

Though eBay should get a trial for abuse of dominant position, on that one, they're actually doing the right thing.

And Simon, had that policy already been in place, you would never even had had the problem.

@Edward Pearson

"I know we live in a kind of Open Source e-Hippie era where everything should be free and that making money is somehow a bad thing, but wake up people, money is what really drives innovation.

Paypal and eBay are both excellent services, and you've got a choice of paying very reasonable fees, or using one of the many free competitors. Good luck with finding one."

I guess you never had a single economics course in your life, much less worked in the field.

First point is, economic theory has shown for three centuries that efficiency mandates marginal-cost pricing (if you don't understand, it's because you're ignorant, check wikipedia or other). That includes price of listing items on the net.

Second point is, auctions are the best example in the world of network effect (once again, ignorance can be solved: check economy+"network effect"). This means that's ebay is an obivous natural monopoly (for "natural" before "monopoly, you're starting to know how to get the solution to your problem), and that as a consequence, emergence of any kind of competitor is amost utopian as long as ebay listens to the market and doesn't push it too far. Then it's free to still pushes it much further than it could in a free-market economy that allows competition (to understand why in this case it doesn't.....).

In the end, it's obviously not making money that is a Bad Thing but making money out of a natural monopoly abusing its dominant position.

Bonus for you cos' I don't expect you'll solve your ignorance problem by yourself:

Assume a second that we authoritarily put all of the items for sale and all of the buyer/seller accounts on myAuctionIsaCompetitorToEbay.com with a rather crappy service and the new ebay fees (while ebay would retain the former, cheaper ones).

What do you think would happen? Would people flock to eBay, an empty site where you can find no buyer for your goods and no sellers if you want to buy something?

People would stick to that other site, not because it's better, not even because it's remotely good, but because the OTHER people are there, and the most precious ressource for an auction site is the people, not the site.

Hence, it proves that quality and innovation has nothing to do with eBay's current success. Any other site that would have the market share would just kill ebay like ebay kills everything else because it has the market share.

It just had the critical mass to become a de facto monopoly, and you don't have a choice to go to a competitor because you'd be almost alone there.

That's a classic "winner takes it all, and then can suck big time afterwards without losing anything"

UK.gov on Galileo: We can't stop it, just sign the cheque

independence

@Charles Manning:

"Yes, El Prez could do a nutter and turn off GPS above Europe in the case of some hostility etc, but then he could just as easily turn on Galieleo jammers/spoofers. Thus, independence is imagined rather than real.

"

That's a pretty stupid comment.

No need to have a currency different fro the dollar for independance. Sure, if we all had the dollar, El Prez could do a nutter and reclaim all money in existence in the case of some hostility etc, but then he could just as easily nuke the European Central Bank and all financial infrastructure in Europe to kill our own curencies. Thus, independence is imagined rather than real.

Well, the difference between turning off a service you own and don't want to provide to someone unless they accept some extravagant conditions and turning off someone else's service by force is, simply, War.

And of course, independence can always be jeopardized by war.

But much as bushies might say "if you don't let us subsidize Boeing while stopping Airbus help, we'll stop GPS for you" (and then re-use the threat for everything that annoys them and their desire for utter supremacy, they wouldn't ever dare such a ludicrous thing as say "if you don't let Boeing become the world monopoly, then we'll jam your satellites" (and why not nuke one capital a day?).

That doesn't mean it does justify the search for independence from the US, but it sure shows your argument to the opposite is crap.

Pirate Bay hits ten million peers, one million torrents

Pirate Bay trying their best to dig their grave

" next we bring charges against blockbuster, netflix, whsmith, hmv, every supermarket, and all manufacturers of blank tapes, CDs, DVDs, VCRs, DVD-writers, PCs, modems, routers, and all copper, aluminium and steel cable, and fibre-optics, for "accessory" to commit copyright infringement. "

However much I like the torrent sites, and however desirable an efficient economy of knowledge and culture is (efficient economy as defined by the last three centuries of economic science, that is "price is equal to marginal cost"), unfortunately, PirateBay are stupid brats who do everything they can to ensure their task is as hard as it can be.

The difference between the above and PirateBay is that Netflix and WHSmith do not put up on their website and on every interview you can get the fact that they want people to do illegal things, and that they're very happy to be the main provider of the possibility of doing such illegal things.

One couldn't be more stupid as people from the PirateBay.

They keep telling the world to go fuck off and they'll help people pirate goods because they like it and they are against the law and want everyone to be able to break it.

How stupid...

Even if they don't host a file on their server, it's illegal about everywhere in the world to do something with the clear aim of allowing someone to commit a felonny/crime.

And here they go about bragging about it.

At the very least, they should say "I'm not doing anything illegal, I'm sorry if my users do, I don't like it a bit. Sure, I don't really like the laws and am campaining to change them, but in the meantime, I'm completely law-abiding and disapprove totally of any illegal use that is made of my service."

They could then even add "here, see, I'm fighting piracy, I put up a notice on the first page of the site saying 'don't be a pirate, that's all wrong and hurts loooots of good, nice people".

And then they would go on making sure everyone gets access to all movies in the world for free.

By bragging about helping people doing illegal things, they're basically acting as spoiled teenagers who needs to shout at the world that they won't abide by the rules. When you're a responsible grown-up, you don't abide by the rules if you don't like them, but you do your best to ensure you do it in a way that lets you go on, instead of inviting the whole world to a show where you breach the law in public in front of hundreds of policemen while yelling "I fuck you" at them.

Still, good luck to them, though I wish they'd make their own luck and try to act responsibly, for once. ('responsibility' as in 'doing what it takes to fuck the system' instead of ensuring said system will catch them)

Israel electric car project aims to wipe out oil

@herman too

Fully agree with Chris.

Battery exchange system would work, because you don't care about your battery: you'll have a different one each day anyway.

Plus, you probably wouldn't even own your battery, you'd just rent the right to have a battery at all times, and the battery is some company's responsibility. whenever you change it, as said, it's controlled and sent for repair/replacement as needed, so you only get quality batteries.

Time Warner moots billing based on bandwidth usage

ISP reality - again

I am not sure, upon reading the "ISP Reality" if goes towards or against what I have posted above.

It goes towards it: the ISPs buy a fixed bandwidth from an upstream supplier, meaning it is a fixed cost whether that bandwidth is used or not (in particular at times of day when noone is using it).

At the same time, the conclusion is horribly wrong: no, that certainly doesn't mean people should be charged by their usage. On the opposite, it means people should get free access whenever the bandwidth is not constrained and that it should be restricted only during the peaks.

One way of restrincting during the peaks might be to charge by usage DURING PEAK TIMES.

That's all.

Oh, and apart from that, because there is a fixed cost per mbps of ISP capacity, the subscription could be based on a speed CAPACITY: you're not using bandwidth? then take the subscription that limits you to 50MB each given hour. But the guy who wants that 1GB an hour day and night doesn't have to pay more because he's using the bandwidth you don't care about during the night. Just to be billed enough at 8.30pm when you're checking your mails and not billing him would make him suck your bandwidth.

Charging by the GB isNOT realistic pricing

There is a very good reason water is billed by the cubic meter.

It is that each meter has a cost to extract, purify and bring to destination.

So you pay a fee for having the right to access water, because it costs just to ensure you keep that right (repairs, maintenance and all) and then you pay an additional cost for each cubic meter.

For broadband, it's completely different. There is NO cost to bring a GB to your home. Theon ly cost is the cost of capacity and maintenance. But once you have a given capacity, whether it's used or not makes no noticeable difference.

Hence the fact that you get all you can eat: you pay for the maintenance cost, but forbidding you to use what is then costless makes no economic sense.

Of course, then there is the question fo what to do when there is not enough capacity for everyone. But the answer is not to charge by the bite all the time. The answer is to have users pay ONLY WHEN their usage is constraining the network. If there is not enough capacity for everyone between 8pm and 11pm, then put an additional cost at that time. It will deter downloaders from downloading at that moment, but they'll use the bandwidth during the night, or any time the network couldn't care less whether the network is used at 10% or 90% capacity.

And the money spent can go to upgrading the capacity (hmm, as if they would do that).

10% or 90% usage is the same cost to the ISP. 99% and 101% has a huge difference of cost. That's those last few percents that need to be addressed, but not at the cost of deterring people from using 90% of the network all the time. That would be a waste of free ressources.

MP3sparks.com downed by links to Russian cybercrime gang

Who says shady outfits can ONLY deal with illegal things?

The provider that MP3Tracks uses is shady. OK.

It allows anyone who pays to use the bandwidth it provides. OK.

So what? What does it imply for MP3Track?

Nothing more than the fact they maybe don't have a choice because other providers wouldn't take them.

Does it means it's itself illegal or shady? Not at all. It might make you suspicious, sure, but then when you know that Visa blocked the paiment on request of the RIAA for something which was, at the time, considered legal in most of the world, and at the very, very least in russia, you can easily see that being legit does not mean bullies from the US will let you operate.

Now if I want to do something completely legal in my country, and a US bully or other is strong-arming a front-street provider into not letting me do it, yes, I'll pay a premium to someone less susceptible to strong-arm techniques to be able to exercice my rights.

US fails to reverse online gambling ban

@Curtis: Exactly

I fully agree with your latest post.

But then why did you initially say that there was no need for ONLINE gambling?

And why did you say there was no way to ENSURE the house was not cheating (implying quite clearly that it was not necessarily cheating you but just might, which is the opposite of your new definition of rigging).

I could have understood a post saying gambling in whatever form was not rational and ended up making you lose money, but that was not at all what you were saying.

Perhaps you just didn't put it the way you wanted.

By the way, gambling can very well actually be a rational thing to do, it mainly depends on your utility curve. Do you prefer your current level of capital, or would you rather have a 1 chance in 101.000 (very small "house fee") to gain 100.000 of whatever your currency and the rest to lose 1?

I know I would rather take my chance, since that 1 lost changes nothing, while in the very remote (and statistically, for a purely risk-neutral economic agent with a linear utility curve, not worth the cost of trying) chance to win would change my life.

Hence it is strategically a winning proposition to bet.

Then the point is, if you repeat this many times, you indeed end up losing a significant amount that will impair your life.

But that's just because losing 50.000 dollars when it's all you have has much more than 50.000 times the consequences of losing one dollar.

There is a clear rationale behind gambling, and it's non-linearity.

(I agree that for most gamblers, and for all addict gamblers, this is however not the reasoning that is done)

@Yseam, Curtis

>So, it's not so much this concept of "screw the rest of the world" you guys love to think the US is all about as it is about "screw online gambling."

I really loved your measured, rational post.

And I would tend to agree with you.

However, the point is not what the US want. It is that they have signed the WTO treaty and are legally bound by its terms. Those terms include respecting WTO rulings. The ruling was, repeatedly, that the US were not compliant and should either accept online gambling from other countries websites, or close a number of outlets (either virtual or physical).

The US should simply not have a choice. they legally don't, at least. And still they sit on the treaties, and that's the problem.

And also, the US never made any argument about laundering. Their argument is that it is addictive and all, and the problem is they never had a case allowing all those physical casinos while forbidding online ones (that is, except the fact physical casinos are paying taxes in the US while the others don't).

@Curtis:

>I see no reason to have on-line gambling. There isn't anyway to assure that the 'house' isn't cheating you, so why be an idiot?

Do you have a way to assure that in a physical casino, slot machines aren't "cheating you"? No, you don't.

That exactly as idiotic, then, to gamble in a physical casino (oh, and it would even work for roulette and all, given the technology that could be used by the casino to rig even that) as in a virtual one.

Nowadays slot machines aren't even mechanical anymore, they're just pieces of software choosing the combination that will come out. Can't see the software? Can't know if it's rigged. Same as online casinos (and software from both physical slot machines and virtual casinos ARE inspected, inspection which you may or may not trust but then it's about trusting authorities or not, not abuot being idiot or not)

Is anyone shocked at the compensations?

Is anyone focusing, as I am, on the word "maintain" in the compensations?

This clearly seems to imply that to compensate for the illegal decision not to follow the treaty they signed, what the US will do is refrain from reneging on other agreements.

they're not actually offering anything, just saying that in return from being allowed to trample the rules on that issue, they will not trample a few other rules (not all others, mind you, just those on "warehousing services, technical testing services, research and development services and postal services", they're not saying they won't fuck the world on every other topic they ever committed to).

Space brains resign over efforts to attract ET attention

niruht

I guess the post by the coward on radiowaves is a troll.

Surely noone could be stupid enough to display their ignorance so ostentatiously after the previous stupid guy got flamed for his ignorant ramblings on radiowaves.

@Iglethal

>On a more serious note, no one seems to have taken into account the fact that power levels decrease via the inverse square law. So whatever the power we beam out, the power level will have decreased to an unidentifiable level before it gets too far!

Perhaps it's because noone is at the same time:

- Full of himself enough to assume what the astronomers are spending their time on simply doesn't work and they don't know it while you do

- Unable to read/Not knowledgeable enough to understand that we're talking about a beam, not a light bulb. You know, like what a laser is doing, this new invention from around 30 years ago that allows you to send light in a focused manner that does not decrease with the square of the distance...

@Mark

>Define "more useful".

Signal processing that has introduced better and faster mobile services was paid for by the needs of SETI.

Grid computing: seti@home.

That's irrelevant.

You don't pursue objectives that are groundless in and of themselves (or worse, possibly fatal to our species) just on the hope that it will lead to useful by-discoveries.

If scientists think it would yield so many discoveries doing Active SETI, then just spend the would-be budget on research on precisely the issues that Active SETI would require solved, without actually sending any signal.

You'll still get results, and you'll even spare some money.

Saying it doesn't chagne much misses the point

Those, ElReg included, who say or imply it's not a problem because it changes nothing or almost nothing to the probability of being detected are missing the point in a shamefully flawed logic.

You can't justify, from a logical point of view, an action that would be bad if it succeeded simply based on the fact it won't succeed.

You have to compare each outcome (succeed/don't succeed) for each situation (send, not send).

Assuming sending the beam won't succeed (meaning that won't be what gets us detected, regardless of whether we are detected for some other reason or are not), then the only difference between sending the beam and not sending it is a waste of money.

So No increased proba of detecting -> wastes taxpayer's money

Then if it can in any way be justified to do it, it HAS to be that it CAN do something, and that if it does, it's something that justifies spending money on.

Now assuming it can do something, then obviously it can mostly gives humanity a random chance to get destroyed utterly so I guess it qualifies as not really worth spending money on

Increased proba of detection -> should kill the bastard who willingly risks being responsible for the most efficient genocide that can be conceived. We should probably even call that ADNocide.

So it leaves us with two choices: either it's the most political decision that can be imagined, or it's pointless and is misusing public money.

More precisely, it's 99% chance of a waste of money, 1% chance of deserving immediate execution for deciding to stake the existence of humanity on the gamble that ET would be benevolent.

Plus, whatever the actual chance of having consequences, the beamers clearly have the INTENT to stake humanity's existence if he just can get the occasion to do so, which should be enough to warrant being caged somewhere cold and isolated.

Dismantling a Religion: The EFF's Faith-Based Internet

@The Author and others: US inefficiency

The trouble with the analysis saying that it's normal to throttle, regardless of the technical way to do it and of whether it's a good thing to assume the IP of the replier to issue a failure, the point is on whether there is a need at all for such measures.

Or at least whether they are really the limiting factor.

I'm laughing heartily to see there is a debate because 384kb/s or whatever can't be used by many users at the same time.

That's because probably they only pay - what was said above? $90 a month - to have TV phone and net.

Take France, yes, the surrendering-monkey one.

For 30 euro, which is $45 or even, in terms of purchasing power parity, which is more meaningful, $30, I have an internet connection.

That connection includes unlimited phone calls for free to 50 countries or so, some 100 channels (the rest of the channels can be selected one by one and I'm not forced into any package where I pay for ten channels I don't want for one I do).

What speed do I have?

25.000kbps.

And I do get full speed.

And I do use bittorrent all the time with no throttling at all from my ISP.

Oh, and it does make a lot of money and is very appreciated by investors, though it had to spend a few billions to upgrade.

And don't forget french people are among the most hungry consumers of illegal downloads, which means a bigger proportion of users are actually trying their best to break the network.

Sure, that doesn't mean my ISP won't run, some day, into the problem and won't have to introduce some kind of limitation.

In the meantime, it shows that the problem is far from being what Comcast makes it to be. The problem of congestion in spite of normal network investment may exist, but Comcast is something like at the very most a hundredth of the way to reaching that point.

In the meantime, it could for one third of the price offer 100 times as much without any strings attached and still make money.

Is there not a problem here?

(and once again, I'm not saying anything on the principle of throtlling, only that this is relevant only when there is a REAL network issue and not just a market-sharing monopoly that doesn't want to invest a cent of its cash-cow money to actually provide a decent service).

Opera hits Microsoft with EC complaint

Those comments on bundling in Linux/Mac

True, Mac and Linux bundle.

And indeed that's not a problem.

But what's illegal is not bundling. It's abuse of dominant position. Bundling for a company in a dominant position is abuse. Windows is in a dominant position.

Thus, bundling in windows has several times been ruled illegal.

Now for Linux and Mac, what's missing to have the same result is simply that they don't have a dominant position they could abuse. Thus, nothing's wrong with them, and citing them to make a case for allowing bundle in windows misses the point (not to say a point can't be made for windows to bundle, but that's certainly not by citing Mac or Linux)

French high court thumps Google Video

@Mark

Please stop comparing the post, the dating or whatever unvoluntarily helping an infringement once.

What the court said here is that if something has been REPEATEDLY notified to a PUBLISHER (the post gives the parcel to you and is finished with it, it does not put the illegal material on display in the post office) as being illegal, he should stop if he reasonnably can.

and oh so reasonnable it is. Just make a hash code (even emule can do that very easily) and if something has been jusdged illegal once, ban reposting the exact same thing.

Do you have any notion what a hash code is? It takes about 50 lines of code to do a basic version of such a thing, and every peer-to-peer software has doe it for years to spot fakes (you know, when you're receiving something LEGAL when you wanted something illegal).

Sure it's more complex because it has to be integrated in the googlevideo framework, but it's still not such an achievment.

See, even google says you're wrong, when they say, interviewed, that they already have this on youtube.

Oh god, that can't ever be done, stop bashing google... what? Google is saying google does it? Google is part of the french "I ask for the moon" anti-google conspiracy then.

The real point is, if it's just a hash-coding, then changing one second of a one-hour video is enough to make it undetectable. Still, that would stop 95% of the repost as very few people would go through the motion of video-editing.

It's really just requesting a token effort on google's side.

I reckon, though, that your previous post replies to the suggestion of having a human watch all the videos, which indeed would be crazy.

But have a basic program that can be coded in two days and then plugged in 6 months by one trainee is much more reasonable a request

@Mark

>Think more about a dating website.

You don't actually (as a company) go out dating all the respondents. All you are is a conduit between people. If two people meet and despite a warning that care should be taken, something terrible happens, you are NOT held responsible.

The point is, unfortunately my example does hold, and yours doesn't.

It is forbidden to publish copyrighted material, just like it is forbidden to kill (or even to act as a conduit between killers and "customers" if you've been warned repeatedly that one of your killers is a killer).

It is not forbidden to publish dating requests even if the dating goes wrong.

In the first case, you're a knowing actor. In the second, you're not.

Now back to my business. I tried again and this time, I thought I'd just take a 10% cut of any contract between providers and customers who met thanks to me. The provider comes, he meets the customer, a murder takes place and he's proven to be guilty.

Once. Twice. Thrice. Always I'm bringing him the customers. Not doing the killing, just allowing him to meet the customer.

Now a judge told me after the third time that I had to not allow him to meet customers.

At least if he didn't have a different hat compared to last time, or a moustache.

Not even report him to the police, oh no, just refuse taking him in.

But hey, that's really unfair, how am I supposed to recognize a guy who didn't change a single piece of clothing or hairface since last time I saw him, and still have a business?

I failed to comply. I didn't fail to complain though, cos' obviously that's sooooo unfair.

So think again please.

What is asked is just that if the EXACT SAME file is proposed again, not even modified by one byte, thenit can't be posted. Whoh, that's really, really unpractical and unfair to a business that did nothing wrong.

Except, that is, have 90% of its business come from illegal postings.

@Nick Drew

>Oh, and why is it that the French courts seem utterly oblivious to the *actual* way things work?! Handing down judgments that are generally meaningless because they're not economically or technologically viable.

For a very simple reason, already explained two posts above your own query.

Because the law does not need to, and even MUST NOT care about whether complying with it is economically viable.

If it is unlawful to steal copyright, then you get punished for it. If the law is lenient enough to let you off the first time provided you remove it, it does not mean it has to be lenient if you continue publishing it.

Once it's settled it is unlawful because it's stealing (which I oppose, but well it's law), then law must be abided by, and that's it.

If google cannot technically or commercially implement a filter, then they just have to close shop, it's as simple as that.

Last year I had created a small company where I offered killing contracts for a budget.

Then I was told I could not lawfully kill.

Crap, the restriction I had on my business was "meaningless because they're not economically or technologically viable". And you know what? The courts, just like french ones, didn't seem to care.

I finally had to close shop and make another living.

I hate those courts "oblivious to the way *actual* things work".

Do you see the point? If you can't (or it's too costly/impractical to) make your activity comply with law, don't do the activity. Simple.

Microsoft loses battle of the piggybacking passwords

@Lou Gosselin

>Why should developers pay $ to Company X instead of developing the technology internally for a fraction of $?

The answer: IDEALLY Company X WOULD MAKE the SALE, but only because they produce a better product for a better cost in a shorter time frame than the developers could have achieved on their own, otherwise Company X doesn't deserve the sale, patent or not.

Think about this very carefully, and I think you'll agree that software patents should be obliterated.

I think you know about nothing about economy or the patent system and its justification.

Fortunately, you have Mattware two posts after you to start teaching you a thing or two on this.

WHY an inferior and more expensive product should be protected is quite simple: if I have to spend 1.5 billion dollars in R&D, like is the average currently, to create a new drug, I NEED to have a protection against generics companies who will, oe month after I get the product out, have identified the molecule in their facilities for $5 millions, and will then start churning it out of their factory for the same basic cost.

Then what? Then two very efficient companies will have to compete on a price that will be the pure production price. None of them will make much money, which is very much OK as it benefits the consumer with lower prices.

Trouble is, the one that invented the drug will go bankrupt as it can't repay its 1.5 billion investment.

And guess what? 2 years later, there's no private research in drugs anymore. Not at all. Not anywhere in the world.

THAT's the principle of the patent system, and focusing on the "better product, better cost" mantra is missing the obvious.

Now there are very good arguments against handing monopolies for many, even most nowadays it seems, patents.

I don't think the idea of using two activation codes really required a big investment tha twould give a competitor - who would "steal" the idea without "doing R&D" for it - an edge over the company that "invented" the idea.

But that's why, as Mattware said, there is an obviousness test.

If it's difficult to be the first to find something, you have to reward the first, even if he's less efficient afterwards, because otherwise everyone would wait to be second, since being first means you're out of business. If it's easy, then there's no reason to give you an edge, since noone will shy from using an idea that "just comes up"

Activation Code <> Password

Does anyone actually read the story?

It's already ludicrous enough when considering what is really said, that is TWO ACTIVATION CODES, no need to get all worked up abuot double passwords whereas nothing was said about this at all and on the opposite, it seems firmly based on activation.

Could still be vaguely related to forums (though there is actually only one activation code, the link you receive and have to click, the captcha being a registration code which is something else), but certainly not what you all seem to be starting to think.

Wii grasses up cheating wife

Flawed thinking

It's funny to see all the many people defending the wife here.

Not because she should not be considered innocent, but because the whole reasonning about it is flawed.

You take the partial information of the article, see that it contains enough to say that she probably did cheat, and then fail to consider what "probably" means.

Your thinking must go like "ok, she spent lots of evenings/nights with the guy, kissed him, the friends said she was cheating, and her husband was away one year. So she probably did cheat, but that's not proof, so the guy should not react like this".

That's pretty stupid.

"probably" does not, as opposedo that reasonning, apply to the real world, but to the lack of information WE have.

This means that probably "she did cheat and the guy has all of the information to prove it, only WE don't have it".

The direct consequence is that it is quite stupid to say "it's just a probability, so the guy should not react that way". It's a probability for us who don't have the information, not for him who does have much more than we do.

The real reasonning should go:

- It's quite likely, the way the news is breaking, that the guy has absolute and irrefutable proof of cheating, and WE're missing the "absolute and irrefutable" part.

- Among the 10 or so % chance he doesn't, there's a 9 in 10 (replace with whatever ratio you want) that she is indeed cheating but HE doesn't have proof.

- Then there's the odd few chances that not only do WE not have the info, does HE not have the info, but also the wife was not cheating. Hard chance of that, but that's not the point.

So in the end, because it is likely we are just missing the info, we should just assume the most likely thing, that is that the guy has irrefutable proof and we don't.

(note: not completely irrefutable but still a good point that is almost implied in the story - but there could be more - would be weird timings: what if the guy sometimes starts playing at 4am? at 7am meaning he spent the night there? at times during the day where the wife is at work, meaning he's at home even when she's not, implying he partly lives there?)

Stuff string theory - try E8 to explain the universe

@Paul Smith

>One irate poster with a PhD told everybody else to shut up as they couldn't possibly understand enough about string (or super string) theory to comment, and they were correct to a point

I am afraid you misunderstood me.

I didn't tell everyone ELSE to shut up. I include myself in there, the point on the phD was precisely "I am quite scientifically literate, and yet I'm not crazy enough to declare after 5 minutes on elreg that it's 'the problem with crap like this. It's interesting math but it's useless as physics.', as someone put it"

And I wasn't saying people should shut up, just that people who don't know anything should be aware of their ignorance and not dare say that this or that is true or false, useful or useless.

Even if E8 is simpler, it is still out of reach of most people. Maybe some can grasp the results if sufficiently simplified, but they still can't emit an informed opinion. If they see a vulgarisation article explaining the thing, they still won't be able to say "this is crap" without being full of themselves dumb-asses.

and that's not about people knowing more or less than me, quite the opposite. It's just that I don't go stating definitive judgments on things I know nothing about.

@Alien8n

OK, right, I went a bit far there.

The ones who are dumb are the ones above who say "it's crap" whereas they're not a bit qualified to judge and can't even understand they're not qualified to have an opinion.

The vast majority is just, as you say, ignorant, those above included, but they have something more than ignorance, that is outrageous pretension.

For the rest, as I guess you understood, I wasn't saying that competent people who either agreed or disagreed were right or wrong or whatever, what the hell do I know about it...

As for the link between mensa score and being a genius, I'll take the occasion to disagree with what I hope was just a joke on your part. Having a high mensa score just means you've got a high IQ, and having a high IQ just means you've got a logical mind, certainly not that you're a genius. You can be dumb as Rainman and have a 160 IQ, that won't make you anything else than dumb, certainly not a genius (and if you wnoder, no I'm not jealous, and yes, I too should know, since I also have quite the score, which noone in his right mind should give a f*** about)

All those incompetent, full of themselves readers

15 or so contributions, three of them from stupid, completely full of themselves readers who know nothing about anything in the field, who probably haven't ever done physics or maths at a worthwhile level (oh yes, I'm sure THEY consider it a worthwhile level, trouble is, they don't even know what the scale is, they probably think they could understand more than 5% of what there is to know to have an interesting opinion).

That's really funny seeing those guys, a bit like people who would say that science has to follow democracy. 90% of people can't understand something? then it has to be useless and be masturbation.

Get real. You're not geniuses, you're just basically dumb people, just like average Joe, and if it hurts to admit it, that's more your problem than the problem of String theory or E8.

Since you have NO WAY to have a meaningful opinion on the topic (neither can I by the way, though I have a phD in mathematics, it's still too hard for me without spending months learning what would be needed to get a grasp of it), why not shut up?

Charles, Anonymous coward and all, do you really feel an irresistible urge to be ridiculous by saying that this or that is crap?

BitTorrent site Demonoid.com downed by Canadian record industry

Previous post said...

"When you come up with a way to quantify the monetary gain brought by a particular technology, such as P2P _AND_ that gain outweighs the gains by continuing the their present course.

"

Not too far from truth, but not right either.

More accurately, it would be when you come up with a way that, based on the xxAA estimation of probability distribution, has a gain that outweighs the expected gain they have from pushing their current agenda.

This is quite different: they are NOT trying to save their current business, which is doomed. They are trying to create a new ecosystem where they get MUCH MORE by locking everyone in, renting you something that costs less for much more (video-on-demand compared to physical rental, which is probably 10 times cheaper in the long run for them and is charged 3 times as much).

If they see a good probability that they can extract 5 times as much money as they did up to now by screwing everyone, coming up with a way, with P2P, to make up with certainty with their current revenue is not enough at all.

And that's why they don't convert.

Because otherwise, since the blanket licence system has been shown many times to guarantee a better revenue stream than the music industry ever had before, they would jump on it. But they want even more.

(that, and the fact that making the pie bigger is not necessarily a good thing for the majors if they get a much smaller share of it)

Ukrainian eBay scam turns Down Syndrome man into cash machine

Please read other people's posts...

Joe, you should read what the other say, not just come and say something false which has already been trashed before.

""But, of course, we all know that the banks and eBay and PayPal don't care if customers are defrauded - because the scammers are also customers, and they're making money either way. It's just not in their financial interests to be too bothered about it.""

eBay is NOT making money out of scammers.

Scammers don't pay eBay fees so eBay makes exactly 0 cent.

Read above.

As opposed to that, though eBay gains nothing frmo the scams, it would COST them to do something against it. And it seems to cost them less in lost business because of lowered image than what solving the issue would cost. That's all there's to it.

No need to invent false reasons.

Anonymous coward misunderstanding

>Asking for payment outside the site is done to cheat eBay of its cut, (the auction never shows as successfully sold so no fees are paid beyond the initial listing, as I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong)

I'll gladly correct you.

Asking for payment outside the site is not cheating eBay at all, you're getting confused with concluding the auction outside the site.

Here the aucion is concluded ON site. It's simply that once you have finished the auction and you have to pay, you can choose whatever payment method buyer and seller can agree on, and that NOT cheating eBay of its cut at all which is based on the auction finishing with a buyer, not ever on the means of payment (though Paypal, if used, is taking another, unrelated cut, but that's something different).

Those sales were completely legit and the buyer was not tryig to cheat/help cheat eBay.

Anonymous coward misunderstanding

Which, by the way, leads me to talking of the cut:

>eBay make huge profits from these auctions, legitimate or otherwise.

someone said above.

Note that eBay is NOT making profit from those scams (and so it is - rightfully - cheated from its cut, though not in any way because of the buyer).

eBay is cheated of its cut simply because the auction finishes, then because it was all done correctly, eBay charges the eBay account of the seller for the fee, and the seller, depending on his settings, either is automatically taken the money from his bank account, or has to pay in a certain amount of time or be banned/prosecuted.

Of course, the scammer expects the account to be banned in a short timeframe because as soon as the items start not arriving, the scam cannot go on.

So there is no incitation for him to actually pay eBay's fee, and he won't (all the more so since to do that he'd have to provide access to his bank account).

So eBay won't be seeing its share of the scam's money, which we can consider fortunate.

Singapore Airlines bans A380 rumpy-pumpy

Stupid prejudice from Anton

"French design at its best

By Anton Ivanov

Posted Thursday 1st November 2007 11:52 GMT

Double bed, personal cabin and no noise proofing...

Somehow I do not think we would ever see that being shipped by Boeing..."

One must be pretty stupid, like in "watching-fox-propaganda-on-surrendering-monkeys-stupid", to utter such crap.

First point is, obviously Boeing was actually not able to deliver a plane that could support suites, so they would in any case be unable to do the mistake.

Second, A380 is not french but franco-germano-something, just like Airbus is far from being simply a french company (and I might even add thanks for that fact as it would not be so successful if french only). I guess it makes it easier for you to live with your prejudice though, so go ahead (until the time you realize Airbus is actually a great company, that day it will at the very least become suddenly at the very least german in your mind, or even american somehow).

Third is, Airbus has actually not much to do with noise-proofing the A380, for the very simple reason that each airline asks of outside companies the equipment to fill the plane (for instance Zodiac is contracted by the airlines themselves to do the seats for the vast majority of planes).

As a consequence, whether perfect or completely crappy, the actual way the suites are handled has nothing to do with Airbus, much less with the french.

Please turn Fox News on again instead of posting, it will people a service.

Woman admits fleecing shopping network of more than $412,000

Whether QVC billed her is not the point

There's a general principle in law almost everywhere in the civilized world that if you intend to defraud someone/commit a fraud/do something that is onviously against the spirit of the law, then you can be charged and condemned even if the letter of the law is respected.

Seeing a blind person without a cane, and opening a sewer hole in the ground 100 meters before her is nothing illegal per se, you just opened a hole in the ground.

You'll still end up in prison for years, as in practice that's murder, though you didn't touch the person.

"Oh, but I do't see why he went to jail. Did he do anything to the person? Was it his fault that the person went out without a cane?"

That's very general: and that's fortunate cos' otherwise it would soon be chaos, since it's always very easy to do something respecting the letter of the law that is completely and obviously wrong.

And that's also why laws are quite generic and state such things as "Anyone who willingly causes harm to someone is obliged to repair it", or whatever depending on the country.

Did the woman willingly cause harm to QVC? Check.

Then she's guilty, final.

That she did so abusing a ludicrous failure of QVC doesn't change it more than abusing the ludicrous failure of a blind person forgetting to take his/her cane when he/she should never ever forget it.

I also take the occasion to note that it's a typically geek way of seeing the law, those comments on "but she only did legal steps one after the other, so that shouldn't be illegal". Come to the real world guys. I like algorithms more than the next guy, but I can still see that the law is fortunately focused on intent and not only on individual steps to achieve that intent.

Start-up sued in US courts over GPL 'violation'

Poor small people struggling to survive...

>This is going against the interests of Free software because it will make everybody worry.

The interest of Free Software is that their will is respected. Their will is to let everyone have a shot at their code for free IF and ONLY IF people redistribute the code based on the erstwhile code.

I fail to see how saying "if you don't respect my only condition to spare a huge amount of money, don't worry, please, pleaaaaase don't worry, I would so much hate that people worry about having to respect my only desire. I'd rather give up my only condition than have people 'worry' " would actually go against their interest.

I'll let you borrow my car for free for the week-end. All I ask of you is to give me a picture of the oh-so-nice place you needed it to go.

But if you don't give me the picture, sure I'll keep letting you have my car, as it would obviously be against my interest. If I insisted on having the picture, my other friends might worry and not ask me to borrow my car for free anymore. Ouch, how I'd hate that.

> Why go after these small people who struggle to survive ?

Because people never struggle so much to survive that they can't add

<AHREF="OurCode.zip">Click here to get the code</A>

on the main page of their website.

Even I can do it on my website in about ten minutes.

When you save hundreds or thousands of men-days of work by using the work of others, the least you can do is spend ten minutes on it when the authors come by and ask you for those ten minutes of your time (OK, let's make it a few hours to go through the buraucracy of the start-up).

Microsoft: no plan to appeal EC verdict for now

Title

>( but then again - I may be dead wrong. Enlighten me if you know better )

Gladly.

It's never been a right for any company t be treated this or that way out of any charter of Universal Rights of Companies.

Humans are the "things" that have rights from a moral point of view. Companies can and should be bankrupted, robbed, destroyed or whatever is felt necessary for people's good (except for the immoral consequences on the owners of the companies).

To put it in a more conventional way, companies exist to serve people, not the opposite. As a consequence, whatever measure is necessary against the companies to ensure the good of the people is fair and normal.

In general, leaving the companies do as they please is a way to achieve social efficiency, because they compete for better and cheaper products in the hope of making more money (and they have no "right" to keep that money, it's only a good thing to let them have it as an incenvtive to produce always cheaper and better goods). But the fact that it's true in general never made that a moral principle, just a rule of thumb.

It happens that economists have known for about two centuries that this rule of thumb does not apply to monopolies (actually even to a broader category of situations, but let's keep the focus on monopolies). As a consequence, it is morally justified, and even necessary, to ditch the general rule of laissez-faire in those cases.

Once again, Ford is not a human. It has no fundamental rights. The only rights it has is what the society decides it should have for the good of the people (as opposed to a human which is considered to have a fundamental right to freedom of religion, even if in some cases the society as a whole might feel better if he didn't). If Ford being able to actually kill Pioneer by denying it any sales was bad for the society, then it not only is acceptable to forbid it, but it is even a duty of the govenment to forbid it. and it happens that it WOUL be bad for the society, since Pioneer and Samsung compete to sell radios so that it keeps getting better and cheaper, whereas once Ford was master of the whole preinstalled radio market (or even of the full car-radio market, as it can make the car incompatible with any other) then it can charge as much as the customers are willing to pay for as crappy a radio as they're willing to endure. which obviously is not in the interest of the society, which makes people feel better if they have better and cheaper car-radios.

That is why you are wrong. You assume there is a moral duty to give the companies some rights, whereas on the opposite, the moral duty is on making sure the rules imposed on companies are done to maximise the good of the society (as in "the humans living in a society"). The Competition Authorities are part of the rules of the game, for the better.

By the way, if you look for an example where it is obvious, take IE versus Opera/Firefox/Mozilla. Imagine M$ was left alone to do as it pleases. It would clearly have prevented the alternate browsers from being workable on widows, in the same way it was proved it killed the first to emerge. Then you would still be stuck with IE having only one tab, no session, no plug-in, probably by now you could not configure the start page anymore, and so on. M$ would do as it pleases because of some mysterious right companies have, and every single windows user would be worse off. Hardly a moral stance, so moral stances like "companies should be allowed" should hardly be considered in that kind of context.

PS: I'm not criticizing the fact you reasonned like that, it is very commonplace among non-economists to mistake the general rule of letting companies live for something that is natural when in fact it is an unnatural and careful pondered choice capitalist societies make in most situations to ensure public good.

Patent law passed in US, but Presidential veto could follow

This is a good thing

This will avoid "ambushes" that could take place when someone would invent something that was bound to become widespread, and instead of patenting it waited for someone else to do it, and then came out in the open, proved they had the idea before, and wrecked the company that had no erason to know someone had already had that idea.

For imperfect that it is, the patent system has one clear aim: push people toward revealing their ideas. this "first to invent" clause was doing the exact opposite, as it pushed you to exploit an idea without telling the world, and you could get the added benefit that if someone ever used your idea, you could sue him, though he had no way of knowing (whereas with a patent, he could check the patent office, however hard that might be which is another problem).

The reform does have a drawback however, that could easily have been fixed: indeed, someone would had an idea, used it, but had no money to patent it will be stuck, wheras before he could claim the rights later.

A way of alleviating this would have been to add to the new "First to file" a clause saying that if someone would later prove he had invented it before, he would keep the right to use his invention, but not get the rights to sue the patenter nor to licence the invention to others.

That way, if you want to sell you idea to those who didn't have it, you file a patent, if you're a small inventor or company and don't have the money for filing a patent, chances are you don't have the money to market your idea to others anyway, but at least you can keep doing what you've always done even when some bigwig starts doing the same.

AllofMP3.com owner faces jail time

talking sense?

> Finally, an American who talks as if he has a mind behind his mouth. Greg, a pleasure to hear your rebuttal.

Hmm, well, if I was in a basic anti-american mood, I'd reply "maybe that's because I'm actually NOT american". But I'm not (in a basic anti-american mood, not not american, is anyone still following? :D).

So I'm not american, but I'll not resent you for thinking so for this once.

And since I'm there posting again, I could add other examples of free things:

- Watching TV or listening to radio (accessing TV is not, but watching it generally is). Why? because producing the content costs, building the network costs, but broadcasting it to one person or everyone is the same, so adding customers is free => watching is free

- Driving roads. Why? Because building them is expensive, but once it's done, it costs almost nothing to have people riding them compared to leaving them unused. If you'd make people pay, less people would use them, which would be a shame and not optimal since they're here anyway. So using roads is free, but you pay for their building (and occasionnal rebuilding) via taxes.

- Tricky one: electricity in some tiny arab states. Why? because building the fuel burning station cost some money, but oil was so abundant that it cost basically nothing to produce the energy once the station was there. So taxes (burdening only foreign companies but that doesn't matter) were financing the building of the centrals, and then energy was free. Now that it is realized that, being in limited supply, oil is not really free, those states are making their population pay.

The last one is a very appropriate example because it shows two things:

- People there complain of the change. They want to keep it free because it used to be. They're wrong. For music, some people want to make it free because they're used to pirating it for free. They're wrong too. But they're wrong about the reason. Not necessarily about the conclusion.

- Things can change. Producing electricity there cost nothing, so the state managed to get it delivered for nothing. It's not true anymore, so it changes. Tracks used to be sold for a price, because it cost something, and there was no reason to complain about that. But now it costs nothing (and I'm careful to talk about tracks, not music production), and the people who can't see the difference just want to avoid spending some time thinking, and believe there's no reason things should change. Bad luck, there is, and for the better (better for the consumers AND the artists).

As a conclusion, I'd advise anyone who is both thinking there's no reason to stop paying music based on quantity and who is open-minded enough to try and realise he just might be wrong to look at economists papers, some appropriate keywords being "zero"+"marginal cost" or "non-rival"+"goods".

You should quickly find some articles that explain in more details than I did why things costless to produce (after an initial investment) should be given away for free if free-market economy is to be efficient.

@Steve: Free and BT?...

> There's a worrying trend that people think music should be free, purely based I'm guessing on people trying to justify their piracy habits as not being illegal. Shall we stop paying our phone bills? C'mon, BT's a big company, they will be able to absorb it!

Hey, you know what? That's exactly what's happening, and it's high time it was.

Phone calls are increasingly becoming free everywhere inthe world, and you know what? It's normal because it costs nothing.

What costs money is the phone network. Phone calls cost nothing to the companies, and economics predict the only efficient solution is to price the consumers that exact price: nothing.

So actually, indeed, BT is increasingly not being paid for phone calls. What it's getting paid for is the network, via a monthly fee.

It so happens that music is, in the same way, costless. 1 track or one million times the same track has exactly the same price, 0. What has a cost is producing the music in the first place. And that's precisely why economics predict the only efficient solution is that music tracks be free (with investment being paid for by either a tax or a monthly fee).

The worrying trend of considering the music should be free is, admittedly, for some people a way to try and feel good about their piracy habits, but for the less numerous but more relevant part of society, it is mostly an obvious statement based on the last three centuries of economic theory, the last few decades most of all (and it's being put in practice, too, in always more fields).

Oh, I'm just thinking about it, there's also a worrying trend that people think email should be free... What? oh, it's normal, because emails cost basically nothing, only putting the service in place does?

European court protects file sharers

I don't want to pay for music...

@Will Leamon

>Just admit it. You don't want to pay for music. When that happens me and my evil ilk will simply sell the business to advertisers.

Yeah. I love that. so many people are hypocrits.

For myself, yes, you're almost right. I don't want to pay for music tracks.

>until the audience ends this vague 'Oh I'll pay for music when it's fairly priced, not going to greedy blood suckers... blah blah'

Oh, but you're also wrong: I'm ok to pay for music once it's fairly priced. It's only that the fair price is actually 0. The track costs nothing, I would pay up to twice nothing to have it.

Not because I don't want to spend money, but because twice the cost is enough.

But of course, if the track itself costs nothing, the initial investment in producing the album is not free, so I'll gladly pay for that, via a tax or whatever other schemes enables everyone to get all the music they want.

What if not greed is the behaviour of majors? it's indeed a question of being a greedy blood sucker. Not our blood, the artists'. Between getting $2 billions (or whatever) a year in a UK-sized country by selling the obsolete medium CDs are, and getting say $2 billions a year via a tax, what is the difference?

For consumers, it means that for the same price, that is around $40 a year, what people spend on albums, they have access to as much music as they want instead of buying just 2CDs (and obviously many small businesses would rush to provide jackets and physical CDs for a few dollars apiece once the music itself was freed, for those who still would want the physical object). So it's a huge gain.

For the music industry, it's getting $2 billions without any distribution cost or intermediates (yes, Virgin Megastore would not be happy but then, if they're useless as intermediates, why weep on them), versus getting the same money with at least half going away in various costs. So it's also a BIG win for the industry.

It's normal: new technology (costless perfect-quality duplication) allows huge gains that can be shared between consumers and producers.

Why do the majors reject such a model while the industry could probably make at least twice as much money while making people happier? Well, because it's the industry as a whole that'd be making the money, not necessarily the majors. And they might well become completely useless once you don't need a distribution network anymore.

Artist might self-produce, just get an agent to deal with renting studios, contracting advertisement business to attract people to their new release, maybe a lending business specialized in investment in artists and so on. As opposed to the everything-included-but-your-hands-are-tied-and-I-get-most-of-your-money packages the major can currently enforce because of their vertical integration and oligopoly status).

Then there would be a real risk that the instead of having a pie size 100, 50 wasted in useless costs, 40 for majors, 10 for artists, you'd have a pie size 100, with 80% going to artists and 20% for the remaining role of the majors.

So though the industry has a lot to gain from freeing the music (provided a levy compensates the artists), the majors themselves, who are in charge currently, have everything to lose.

So yes, greedy bloodsuckers indeed, who price music unfairly.

Let me pay my $40 a year to a state- or independant- rights distribution agency, let me reward the artists better that way, and let me get 500 albums a year for the price of 2 currently.

I want to pay a redistributing body for the right to listen all the music I want, I don't want to pay the majors for individual music tracks.

Behind the Apple vs Universal breakup

Title

@Stu Reeves

Exactly, and I don't see why it makes my argument crap.

Quite the opposite, I fully agree with a levy for photographers, authors, graphic designers and all.

Note that, however, you got it completely and fully wrong.

"illegally reproduced" is absurd to use as a reply to my comments, since by definition, the levy needs to be a counterpart to it being LEGAL to reproduce.

Also, where did you ever see that it should be authors or graphic designers or whatever who get to raise a levy? Where did youi see me say that U2, Britney Spears and Korn should each raise a levy? You reply in bad faith I'm afraid.

What I do support (as well as so many theoretical articles if you read economic scientific paper) is a levy for the industry, so that there is a pool of revenue for the music industry to be shared among all artists (and if need be, the ones whom they work with/for).

I thank you for raising the subject, however badly: yes, indeed, such a levy should also be raised for the authors as a whole (the proceeds having then to be split among them by an organization, just like for the AHRA, how to rightly split the money being another issue down the line). At least the day when all the categories you cited will be concerned with widespread adoption of the marginal-cost tarification, which is not currently the case.

In the meantime, because there are no individuals actually BUYING nice pics (and professional wouldn't usually do it illegally), there is nothing to compensate, as there is no switch to a different business model for pictures. If some day there is and it's good for the society to allow photographs to live by paying them while allowing everyone access to everything rather than having to see just one or two pictures because you pay for each one, then fine, it'll be time to have a levy for them too.

Levies

@Mo:

>The biggest flaw in the argument of a levy on hardware sales is that I'VE ALREADY PAID FOR THE CDs that I'm sticking on my iPod.

That is, assuming you paid for your CD. The tax is justified only as a compensation for the right to get the music without ever buying the CD, by getting it by whatever means you want. In that case the CD you pay or don't pay is just for the physical object, in the same way as you can actually buy a Linux DVD if you like having a DVD an a user guide.

the levy is just there to ensure that the rights for the music itself are paid for, music which you should of course then be legally allowed to get by any means of your choice, otherwise I agree that the levy is unjustified.

@Connor Garvey

>Should I also pay a tax to the oil companies when I buy a car?

Oh! How about a hand out to Microsoft whenever I buy a PC.

I'll have to give money to the soft drink companies whenever I buy a cup because i *might* put soda in it one day.

The comparison are ALWAYS ludicrous as soon as they compare a physical product (oil) to an immaterial one (music). There's no reason to pay the oil companies for their drilling investment when you buy a car, because you'll pay for the drilling investment by buying oil, which I never succeeded in downloading on P2P networks, no matter how hard I tried. there's a reason to pay the music companies for their recording/producing investment (who to pay exactly and how much is another debate) when you buy an iPod, because you can completely avoid ever paying one shilling for the music itself while still enjoying it.

That's the difference between rival goods (of which there's a limited supply for a given cost, for instance concert seats) and non-rival goods (which we do not need to fight over: once a song is produced, everyone on earth could enjoy it on his iPod without there being a shortage of it.). Non-rival goods should cost 0, and as a direct consequence should be paid for by levies.

Oil and soft drinks are rival goods, your analogy is inappropriate

(Microsoft comparison is more apt, the problem there being quantity; a levy is only beneficial if you want an all-you-can-eat product like music, not an OS of which most people only want to be able to run one or at most two at the same time)

Yes, it is right that they seek royalties

... In spite of all the crap incompetent punters are uttering here.

Why is it right? It's the economics, stupid!

The way to achieve efficiency for the distribution of goods in a society is to have goods be sold at marginal price.

This is because selling at less than production price incites people to spend the goods without a need proportionate to the cost, and selling higher than that cost makes people shy out from buying, which reduces the amount of pleasure (total) derived from a product. What is important for efficiency is not the transfer of money (whether it's in one pocket or the other, it's there somewhere, you could always tax it back idf needed) but the fact that the price is right.

In our case here, it implies that the cost should be 0. It costs nothing to duplicate a song, so it should cost nothing. Not because of any ideology, but for practical, efficiency reasons: if I value listening to a crap song at 1c and it costs nothing to the producer, why should I be deprived of the pleasure, and the producer of the money? what if I value it 0.5c? 001c?

So music in our age should be free.

That has been very well understood for a long time, you don't pay per hour you listen to radio.

But then you need to make the business live (not necessarily the major, but the industry as a whole, whatever parts of it are necessary).

But you can't ask people to pay per song, not even to pay for the right to listen in an unlimited manner, because the price will always be too high for someone who would have been ready to pay half that. So in that case it's pleasure lost for the guy, AND money lost for the industry => inefficient.

The only optimal solution, as has been known by economists for around 2.5 centuries now, is to make everyone pay for the good of all. You get to pay a price whatever you do, that way you're then free to benefit from the full service. Some end up losers, as they pay more than they value the fact of listening to whatever they want whenever they want, but pricing them out would increase the cost for others, which would in turn deter some of those, which increases the price for those who are left, and so on.

This is why a levy of some kind is THE right way to go, as anyone with a good economic background and no vested interest in one side or the other, will tell you (THE right way assuming it is at all possible to put it into place, but then that's not an ideological question anymore, as opposed to what I can read above).

For information, I'm NOT a major lovers, quite the opposite, I consider them parasites which have outlived their usefulness, but still, that's not a reason to say that a levy is not in itself a good thing (though as very well pointed out by the good journalist you're criticizing without good cause, it would be better if raised by an organization that as the artists' well-being at heart).

Also note that all of you are paying for the wellfare of all, for the public roads they're not using, for the army, for whatever thing you cannot efficiently ask people to pay a contribution of their own choice, because the good of the society as a whole mandates that you don't give people a choice - even if they're in good health or have a personnal insurance and so don't care about Medicaid/NHS/whatever social health service there is in your country.

Alltunes.com claims win in Russian copyright case

to sum it up...

All that to say that "Free" is not the word "lazy fat ass sloths who think everything should have a penguin motif on it" use for how the music should be, but the word economists would rather use ("free" including "all-you-can-eat, subscription-based")

For free-market idealists who should take economy courses

>Competition is a good thing - and yes, there need to be more models which make music accessible to everyone - and these systems are being explored already in subscription forms and more, but this isn't a post about the music industry or Alltunes.com - it's about the f*cking greed of a big bunch of lazy fat ass sloths who think everything should have a penguin motif on it, and be labelled 'free'. (i have nothing against linux, just the hive mind)

What is funny with people blinded by the market ideology is that they're generally the ones who have the least knowledge and competence in ecnomics.

Let's walk you through a little explanation of the origin of the market economy and its justification by economists.

The general aim is to achieve social good. Meaning the best overall satisfaction of the population. It is NOT and has never been to give an edge to clever people, or to allow a few winners to make lots of money because "they deserve it" or whatever. No, the aim is simply to make the most for the overall population. It seems quite logical, as if that were not the final aim, it would not go together very well with democracy (if the aim is to make the cleverest the richest, then we should favor coups so that clever people end up absolute dictators because "they deserve it").

Starting from there, economists, for a good number of centuries (4 now) have been thinking about how to achieve this. Knowing that man is selfish, achieving overall good is difficult. Fortunately, it was discovered that UNDER A NUMBER OF (quasi mathematical) CONDITIONS, pursuit of slefish profit by everyone may actually be a good way towards the greater good.

This has led to the success of the market economy, where people are free to compete to get the most of whatever they want, and that way achieve the greater good.

But how is that done? It's based on a number of assumptions.

To achieve the social good by selfishness, there must be competition, that is, individuals vying for market share by competing on costs and quality.

But why would that lead to social good? You seem not to know and to stop at "if it's free market, then it's good. People who think further are morons". You're wrong. There is a reason why it leads to social good, and it's not just magic.

It is because competition drives down costs, theoretically and in a perfect world, down to marginal cost of production. And that marginal cost tarification is the price where the most people benefit the most from the products.

And in turn, why should competition drive prices down to marginal cost? It's because of the assumption that all industries face decreasing returns, that is, each new unit costs a bit more than the previous one to make.

That is 17th century economics, based on the main production of the time, that is food (once you've used all good soil, you have to use lower yields soils and thus you get decreasing returns: the additional production requires more efforts than the previous ton) and raw materials (it is quite obvious that petrol is more costly to extract once you've finished readily accessible onshore fields).

Since economists, as opposed to people who know nothing but are just regurgitating general conclusions applied to wrong contexts, are not that dumb, they also have investigated, one century or so later, with the raise of indutrialisation, how to reach social optimum in case of INCREASING returns, that is when the next unit costs less to produce than the previous one. This includes fixed-costs industries, such as... the music industry. Getting ONE Madonna new series of 15 songs takes a lot of money. Making 1.000.000 duplications of these songs can esaily cost around 0 cent (you can just put the first series on a p2p network and here you go, you've got yourself 1.000.000 versinos for free).

The conclusion of modelization, thinking (yes, actually THEY do think) and experience has proved that the optimal way of managing this is through tarification at marginal cost (here, 0 cent), which is the single most important thing that is underlying the efficiency of the free-market economy. Then of course, the producer loses money, because he never gets the initial investment back. Which is why the marginal-cost tarification is not all. There is also the investment subsidy, which can take many form but must be decorrelated from the act of getting access to the product (or it's just a cost which invalidates the possibility of optimal behaviour of agents leading to efficiency). It could be government funded, it could rely on a special tax, it could be based on an all-you-can-eat pricing (priced to cover investment and benefits and followed by a 'free' price), or whatever other schemes.

But it is what economics prove.

Then there come ignorant people who just take the general conclusion (free-market economy is good) and completely ignore the restrictions that apply to this, probably because it's easier for them to think the world is simple. Unfortunately, it doesn't work this way.

As a consequence, there is no justification to the music industry clinging to a model of tarification that is bad for society as a whole, as proven by centuries of economics which you probably know nothing about.

The correct tarification that REAL free-market lovers push for is the one that does make music free, because that is what its marginal cost is. And it's not just by chance if radio is free, if TV in general is either free or based on all-you-can-eat tarification.

Music HAS to go that way if free-market's justifications are to be upheld, and in the same way as a monopoly can rightly be punished for abusing its position (because it runs against competition which is the usual way toward marginal-cost pricing), an oligopoly that prevents marginal-cost tarification should not go unhindered.